


Golden Age

by MildredMost



Category: The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Genre: Breathplay, Crossdressing, Dressing Room Sex, M/M, Spanking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 06:18:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13140825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MildredMost/pseuds/MildredMost
Summary: James Hazell is making a movie in London when his past comes back to confront him.“We’ve an old friend in common. Ralph Lanyon.”James felt his mouth dry out. He said nothing.“Gosh don’t you remember?” Bunny’s voice was light and innocent. “He remembers you. He was your head of house at school, wasn’t he? It sounds like he was terrifically strict.”He let his voice linger on ‘strict’. James swallowed.





	Golden Age

**Author's Note:**

  * For [havisham](https://archiveofourown.org/users/havisham/gifts).



> Um...merry Christmas!

“Who’s the beautiful boy?”

The make-up girl, who was painstakingly applying a false moustache to James Ford’s face, flicked her eyes to the left.

“Which one?”

“The one...” James began, moving his head, but Janet grabbed his chin.

“If you dare move in the middle of my doing this, I shan’t paint out those dreadful eye bags and you’ll look like hell in your close-ups,” she said. “What were you up to last night, anyway?”

James closed his eyes at fuzzy memories of cocktails and jazz and sequinned bottoms on his lap. Girls’ bottoms, sadly.

“Cary took us to some bloody place near Leicester Square. Christ knows,” James said.

“Right, it’s on. Stop talking a moment, will you, while it takes. Look up,” Janet said and dripped some eye-drops into his bloodshot eyes. James blinked.

The beautiful boy wandered past again, blurred this time.

“That one,” he ground out, not moving his mouth. Janet looked up from the bag of magical tricks she used to make him look presentable after a heavy night.

“Oh,” she said. “He’s a sound technician. He’s terribly good with the old equipment we’ve got here, apparently.” She dabbed a brush into a pot of liquid and began to paint under his eyes.

“Is he indeed,” James said, beginning to smile, before realising he’d mess up the moustache.

“I suppose you’ve got some equipment that needs looking at?” Janet said.

“As the tart said to the vicar,” said James, with a low chuckle. “You couldn’t introduce us could you?”

“Don’t know his name. Can’t you just do your charming, helpless thing with all the smiling?” Janet said, smushing a large powder puff into the middle of his face. “Usually works.”

Usually did.

Xxxx

The tap at his dressing room door made James sit bolt upright. He’d been lounging with his feet up, reading the paper and smoking, and not learning any lines. It was the same old thing anyway. He was the handsome, uptight RAF officer whose fiance is lured away by a rugged American GI. He could do it in his sleep.

“Come in!” he called, putting out his cigarette. When nothing happened, he got out of his chair and yanked the door open.

It was, as he had hoped, the beautiful sound technician. He had his hands thrust boyishly into his pockets, and as James gave him the once-over, he tilted his head so that his dark hair fell across his forehead.

_Oh, yes._

“So sorry,” he said. “I thought I heard you say ‘come’ but I wasn’t sure.”

If it was possible to get more innuendo into a sentence, James wasn’t sure how.

“I um, was having trouble with this telephone,” he lied, indicating the set on the untidy dressing table. “I’m dreadfully stupid about things like this.” He gave him his patented charming-but-clueless smile.

“Not really my department but I’ll take a look,” the technician said, then looking at him from under his lashes, “Mr Ford.”

“No need for that,” James said. “James is fine. And you?”

“My friends call me Bunny,” he said, crossing the room and throwing a look at James over his shoulder. Christ, any Hollywood starlet could learn a thing or two from this boy, James thought, as he sat back down to enjoy the show.

“Why Bunny?” he said, admiring the back view he was getting as Bunny leant over to check the wires.

“Goodness, I don’t know if I can tell you,” Bunny said. “It’d give you a terribly bad impression of me.”

 _Definitely flirting, thank God_ , James thought.

“James is my real name, but Ford isn’t,” he said conversationally. “No story there, I just thought Hazell was so frightfully English sounding, like a rosy-cheeked Yeoman or something, I...what is it?”

Bunny had turned sharply and was staring at him.

“You’re James _Hazell_?” he said, replacing the receiver with a clatter.

James felt the impending doom of someone whose past was about to catch up with them.

“Yes. Do I...have we…?”

“We haven’t,” Bunny said, shoving his hands casually back into his pockets and looking deceptively mild. “We’ve an old friend in common. Ralph Lanyon.”

James felt his mouth dry out. He said nothing.

“Gosh don’t you remember?” Bunny’s voice was light and innocent. “He remembers you. He was your head of house at school, wasn’t he? It sounds like he was terrifically strict.”

He let his voice linger on ‘strict’. James swallowed.

“How funny that you don’t recall,” Bunny said, tilting his head to one side. “I’d have thought anyone would remember a thing like that.”

“Do…” James’ voice failed. “Do you have somewhere we can talk?” he managed.

Xxxxx

Bunny had driven them in his Riley to his rather sweet, beautifully decorated flat. James sat in the chair he’d been shown to and watched as Bunny turned on the wireless and flitted around the room, bringing him an ashtray and opening the cocktail cabinet. One of the doors of the cabinet had been smashed and James wondered abstractly why Bunny hadn’t had it mended.

Bunny still hadn’t mentioned why they were here, but James had a fair idea. He managed to catch Bunny’s eye at last.

“Now look here,” he began. He’d terrify Bunny, he decided. He summoned his most authoritative voice, the one he’d used for Antonio in the Merchant of Venice, back when he was in rep. “You’ve no idea what you’re up against. Hollywood lawyers eat small fry like you for breakfast, and I can afford as many as I need, so you might as well just…”

“You needn’t carry on, this isn’t blackmail,” Bunny said.

“Then what…” James had had the wind taken entirely out of his sails. “Well what’s all the cloak and dagger stuff about? Dragging me off here, wanting to ‘talk’?”

“My dear, you were the one who wanted to ‘talk’. And the one who suggested we go somewhere, if it comes to that.”

“Does Ralph live here, with you?” James asked, in sudden horror. “Does he want to...oh Christ. Look. Do you have a telephone here? I’m going to call my driver and go home and we can forget this whole thing. Tell Ralph I’m very sorry, but it was all a very long time ago.”

“You’re ever so dramatic, aren’t you?” Bunny said, and smiled, but not nastily. “I was just curious to meet you after all this time. I knew Ralph’s Hazell was in Hollywood but I never made the connection to you.”

“Well I don’t suppose Ralph follows my career very closely. I expect he rather despises the whole thing.” James tapped his fingers on the arm of the chair. “Any chance of a drink?”

“Let me. There’s a cocktail I’ve been dying to try out from an American magazine I got hold of. Looks _divine_.”

So did Bunny, come to that. James, who was used to being the best looking person in a room at any given time, was finding this pleasantly disturbing.

“So have you and Ralph been together long?” he said.

“We’re not together at all. It was over years ago. He two-timed me with some mousy little thing, you went to school with him too. Odell. Thought a terrible lot of himself.”

It wasn’t the whole story, that was obvious, but James let it alone for now. He could almost hear himself in these hurt and bitter words.

But Odell, of all people. “Oh _God_ ,” James groaned and started to laugh.

“What’s funny?”

“Ralph and Odell. He got him at last, then.”

“Oh didn’t he _just_.”

There is nothing so wonderfully uniting as a good bitch about someone you mutually dislike. Bunny served up the cocktails, bringing the shaker over so that they wouldn’t have to move again, and dished the dirt with relish.

“You decorated a room Ralph used,” James began to laugh. “Like _this_.”

“Of course I did. I wasn’t going to slum it just because he likes to pretend he’s still on board ship. You should have seen his room. Such affectation, darling,” Bunny said. “All that rough soap and spartan bedding. Very manly.”

James shook with laughter. “I think this is all beautiful. But to think of Ralph sitting on a chair like that one. Or drinking out of those cups.”

“Oh that was part of the fun,” Bunny said. “To see how far I could push it.”

“I’ll bet,” said James. “He must have loathed it.”

“Darling. You have no idea. He thought it was so _common_. So terribly lower-class to care about your surroundings and so…” Bunny dropped his voice to a whisper, “So _female_. He couldn’t bear it. Made me laugh.” James wondered if he’d laughed at the time.

Bunny had left the room briefly to ‘freshen up’ and had come back swathed in a silk dressing gown. It was long enough that James couldn’t quite work out how much clothing there was underneath it, but he was willing to bet not a lot. He caught Bunny’s eye and gave him his patented winning, boyish smile, but had a feeling that Bunny had possibly invented that sort of thing.

“Another?” Bunny said, smiling back, and James handed over his glass to be refilled.

“I can just see them, stultifying together,” James said, half-way down his second drink. “Working out the ways that sodomy’s all right when they do it, but not if you act _queer_ , god forbid. I don’t suppose Odell can even get it up for someone who can’t read Sophocles in the original.”

“Ralph certainly could, but I think he hated himself for it.”

“Read Sophocles or get it up? Oh he can barely think about himself that way. I gather he told you all about that beating he gave me.”

“He did. It sounded terribly naughty. The way he tells it, he was caning you for the good of society, and had to run screaming from your raging erection.”

“Ha! Thought so. Terrible, disgusting Hazell and poor noble Ralph guiding the misfit through the perils of adolescence. He was as hard as I was,” James said. “Bet he didn’t tell you that.”

“No he didn’t. You made things rather tricky for him afterwards.”

“Yes,” James said, thoughtfully. “I was a tricky customer all round at that age. I didn’t understand myself really. I couldn’t seem to hide myself the way the others did.”

“What do you mean? From the schoolmasters?”

“No, I mean I couldn’t seem to conform. My school fellows were all so wonderfully casual, they never got worked up about things; it just wasn’t done. And I wasn’t casual about anything. I was always falling in love, or being too emotional, or my interests were wrong, or my mannerisms. I would get hysterical over things, and between that and being rotten at cricket, it was frightfully infra dig to be friendly with me. I tried praying at one point,” James started to chuckle. “Church and all that. But I found myself enjoying the theatre of all the self-flagellation more than I was finding any absolution.”

“Smells and bells. Too dramatic,” Bunny said, lighting a cigarette. “But you weren’t all that alone. Old Ralph took up with you.”

“Well, my dear, look at me,” James said. “And I was even prettier when I was seventeen.”

He was rewarded with a genuine smile.

“Weren’t we all,” Bunny said. James reflected that Bunny at seventeen might have been a little much, even for him.

“I was desperate about him, or so I thought. You know what one gets like about Ralph; everyone does. In some ways I knew that Ralph was only with me because I was willing, and because he thought I was hopeless anyway. I would never be quite the thing.”

James thought back to his realisation that Ralph had a line about certain things, and that he fell on the wrong side of it. Whereas Odell was firmly on the right side; unspoiled and pure. Someone to be cherished.

He looked at Bunny and saw that he’d had a similar realisation at some point in the past, and had most likely hated it as much as James had. And they both knew deep down they were being cruel about Ralph (and Odell, but that mattered less) for he and Odell appeared to have had a love story on a different level than anything either of them had experienced.

“Anyhow, after that final beating I panicked. Ralph and I had been in it together up till then, I’d thought. But all of a sudden he was revolted by me and I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to make it his fault. I went too far of course; I tried to take it back but it was too late. Ruined his life, made a terrible mess of things. And I thought there might be something terribly wrong with me.”

“And was there?” Bunny said, stretching like a cat and putting his cigarette out in the ashtray. The silk dressing gown was slipping off a shoulder in the most distracting way.

James took a draw of his cigarette.

“Was I disturbed, you mean? I’ve spent absolute thousands on psychiatrists and therapists and even the odd hypnotist. I’ve had every inch of my neurosis gone over with a fine tooth comb. Turns out, there’s nothing wrong with me. I just like being hit when I’m fucked, and I prefer a man to do it. That’s all. It’s not even unusual which is irritating.” James flung himself back against the chair. “I do hate to be predictable.”

“How disappointing for you,” Bunny said, and stood up, pulling the silk robe tight at his narrow waist. James looked up at him and swallowed. Bunny prowled over to the chair and straddled him, enveloping James in silk. He tugged James’ head back by the hair so he could kiss him, much more roughly than James had expected and he felt himself harden immediately. His thoughts blurred as Bunny teased his lips gently apart, slipping his tongue inside. He was even more beautiful close up, his lips full and soft, eyes swept with long lashes. James wondered if he’d want fucking or if he could be persuaded to fuck James instead.

James pulled his mouth away to ask but Bunny spoke first. “Now tell me all about this caning business. Does it have to be someone terribly butch?” he said.

“No. Not at all. I’ve always thought it’d be rather wonderful to be on the receiving end from a young slip of a thing in silk,” James’ voice became a little hoarse as he pushed his hands inside the dressing gown and discovered the extent of Bunny’s undress.

“Mmm,” Bunny said, grinding against him, and James discovered silk underwear too. Dear God. “I don’t have a cane I’m afraid, but I can improvise. Get over the end of the sofa.”

James undressed faster than he ever had in his life. He usually had to pay for treatment like this, his hang-ups about what excited him still strong enough to prevent him asking a partner for anything even close.

This was so much better than any whore he’d ever found.

Bunny spanked him with his hand at first, but evidently wasn’t satisfied with this, as he disappeared after a moment, and came back with a large hairbrush and a bottle of oil. James squirmed with anticipation.

Bunny spanked him hard with hairbrush until he was writhing and gasping out half sobs, his skin on fire.

“Oh god, stop, please. Please, sir.” God, the ‘sir’ was a slip, a throwback to school, but when he turned his head to see Bunny’s reaction, he saw he’d liked it.

Bunny began fingering him open while dragging the bristles of the brush over his tender skin. James had never known anything like it. He found himself rutting against the arm of the sofa.

“ _Christ_ , will you just fuck me,” he panted, arching back against Bunny.

“So impatient,” Bunny said, pushing James back down. More oil and stroking, and then a moan from Bunny as he pushed his cock inside James. James pushed back, wanting more, his cock sliding against the leather of the sofa.

“Look at me,” Bunny said, and James looked back over his shoulder. “Tell me what you want, and call me sir while you do,” he said. He tilted his head. “Unless you don’t want to play?”

James had never wanted to play more in his life.

Xxxxx

They were inseparable for the rest of the shoot after that. Not on set of course, but after hours, at James’ hotel or Bunny’s flat. Bunny wanted to take him to parties, but James worried he’d be recognised. Most of the time they lounged half-dressed in Bunny’s sitting room, mixing experimental cocktails and listening to loud music on the wireless. James hadn’t met anyone so unashamedly up for anything in bed, and it was glorious. All his strange little kinks and wants were met with a wicked smile and an eager mouth or hand and he couldn’t get enough of it. He felt bewitched.

The end of filming loomed, and California beckoned. James daydreamed now and again about sweeping Bunny back to Hollywood with him, but he seemed like such a London creature - happier in the dark clubs and bars of Soho than the relentless sunshine of James’ home.

xxxxx

 

It was the second last day of filming and most of the cast and crew had already left the studio for the day. James was lingering around the set, hoping to find Bunny. He’d left him a note earlier but hadn’t heard anything back, though that wasn’t unusual. Bunny did like to toy with him, the little minx.

He turned at the sound of laughter coming from one of the sets being dismantled.

James heard hammering and then more laughter, Bunny’s voice rising above the others and being answered by a lower one. He poked his head around the back of the set to find Bunny quite at ease and surrounded by carpenters, perched on a workbench with sawdust in his hair. Seeing James he tipped his head to one side in a coy-yet-innocent way which was so endearing that James vowed to practice it in the mirror.

“Sorry sir,” said one of the carpenters, “Are we bothering you? Bit of a noisy job this one.”

“Not bothering me at all,” said James.

“He’s come to check your dovetail joints,” Bunny said cheekily. “That set the other day might as well have been on board a ship. Talk about shaky!”

“Watch it, Billy,” said the man Bunny was sitting next to. He was older, with lean wiry muscles and dark hair not unlike Bunny’s, just sprinkled with grey. He gave Bunny a playful shove and Bunny hopped down off the bench.

“Did you want me?” he said to James, his expression teasing.

 _I always want you_ , James wanted to shout, jealous suddenly.

“If you’ve got a minute,” he said instead. Bunny raised a well-groomed eyebrow and followed him to his dressing room.

As soon as the door was closed and locked, James had him up against the wall, kissing him.

“Can’t stop thinking about you,” he said. “Billy.”

“Don’t you dare,” Bunny said breathlessly.

“That man called you…” James was distracted by Bunny’s smooth warm hands, sliding below his waistband.

“He’s my dad,” Bunny said, stopping. His face was defiant.

“Oh,” said James. He felt Bunny tense.

“He got me the job, he’s worked for the studio for years. He’s a joiner, my mum’s a hairdresser. They were bombed out of the East End in 1941, and now they’ve got a pre-fab out at Catford. So now you know.”

So now he did. And found himself not giving a damn.

“Lucky you,” he said. “My mother lives in Cheltenham and spends every day drinking herself silly. My father hasn’t spoken to me since 1935. I’ll tell you everything my psychiatrist says about it if you like, I’m sure you’d find it fascinating.”

“Oh darling, I’ll simply lap up every word of it later,” Bunny said, biting on James’s bottom lip. “But I’d rather like you to suck me off just now, if you don’t mind.”

James moaned his assent and they stumbled back against the dressing table.

“Wait,” he managed. “There’s champagne. I got it for you. For us.”

The look of unadulterated delight on Bunny’s face was a new and unexpected pleasure to him.

“What a sweet idea,” Bunny said, kissing him. “You open it darling, I always make a hopeless mess of it.”

It seemed that very nice champagne rubbed all Bunny’s sharp edges off and made him brimful of mischief. They finished it all too soon, gossiping their heads off about who was having a go-around with who from the cast, and found themselves wanting another drink. James wondered if he could whisk Bunny off to the Cafe Royale but he wasn’t dressed for it and he didn’t want to break the mood by going home.

“Come on, there’s usually a bit of gin in Wardrobe,” Bunny said. “Let’s just have another little drinkie.”

The studio was even more deserted now, and Wardrobe was entirely empty. Bunny flicked on the lights and locked the door. He rummaged a bit in the wig cupboard, and produced some London dry. Pouring it into their champagne glasses, they looked around them.

“Let’s play dress-ups,” Bunny said boyishly, running his hand along the silks and furs hanging on the clothes rail.

“Let me dress you,” James said suddenly. “Please.”

Bunny let him. James undressed him entirely, stopping to kiss his shoulders, his throat, his chest. Then he dressed him back up in a silk slip and a fur coat, painting his lips a deep plum colour, winding a rope of paste pearls around his neck. Bunny watched him all the while, his eyes wide, breath shallow with arousal. James sat back and looked at him.

“Have you ever watched yourself fuck in a mirror before?” James said. Bunny looked over his shoulder at the full length mirror behind them lit all around by light bulbs.

“You won’t be watching yourself,” Bunny said.

He was right. James had always found it more arousing to watch himself before. Not this time. Bunny, naked apart from a fur coat and the rope of pearls, had him on his back, one leg hitched over his shoulder, and was fucking him with frantic thrusts of his narrow hips. James couldn’t wrench his eyes away.

“Touch yourself,” Bunny ordered, and James gripped his own cock. “Faster darling, I want you to come with me in you.”

“Can you, _ah_ ,” James arched up. “If you choke me I’ll...I’ll finish faster.”

“Goodness, you’re full of nice surprises,” Bunny breathed, lifting his hands to his own throat.

Moments later James was watching himself come with Bunny buried deep inside him, a rope of pearls wound twice around his neck. Bunny kept the necklace pulled tight as he came himself, James arching and thrashing, his spend coating both their stomachs. Just as James thought he might pass out, the necklace broke and the beads cascaded across the floor.

James lay back, gasping for air and reeling from the most intense orgasm of his life. Bunny lay down beside him, twining their legs together and pulling the fur over them both.

“If you ever want turn-about, do say so darling,” he said. “I think that’s one of the things Ralph and I fought about the most. I told him, sometimes I want to be the jockey and sometimes the horse. But he wouldn’t have it.”

“So are you going to tell me what really happened with you and Ralph?” James said, turning so they were face to face.

“I did,” Bunny said, looking him straight in the eye. Bunny could lie like breathing, James thought. He’d never be able to entirely trust him. Which gave James a perverse thrill of excitement of course.

“Come on Bunny,” he said. “You’re not the type to take that sort of thing lying down.”

Bunny let out a sigh which turned into a chuckle. “Well I’ll tell you now, because you know what I’m like already. You wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with me if I’d told you first. I was awful,” he said. “A jealous cat.”

“Nothing to me, I’m sure. Tell me.”

Bunny did. About reading the diary, and discovering Ralph’s heartbreak. And then his heartbreak being mended in the most startling way.

“Ralph had one foot out the door even before Odell did his Lazarus trick. He was only still around because he was half-sozzled all the time; heartbroken I suppose.” Bunny’s mouth twisted then. “Quite the come down for yours truly - I’m used to wrapping the boys around my little finger. But you know what one gets like about Ralph.”

“Stop stealing my lines,” James said. “But why didn’t you move on? I hate to be the one to break it to you, but you’re terribly good looking. He can’t have been your only option.”

“Funny isn’t it? He tried to give me the brush-off and I just clung on tighter, like one of those sea creatures.”

“Limpets.”

“Oh darling, prettier than that. An anemone I think I mean. Awful, really. I think I felt…” Bunny looked wistful and James couldn’t tell if it was studied or not. Either way he looked very picturesque. “I’d never been despised like that before. Old Ralph isn’t a snob, not really. But Odell is. And I thought ‘Well I’ll bloody _give_ you something to despise me for then.’”

This rang true. Bunny finished his story, right to the ignoble end, and looked shocked when James wrapped his arms around him.

“Ralph beat you unconscious?” James said.

Bunny nodded. James swore.

“You were in hospital?”

“A few days.”

“Didn’t anyone wonder?”

“He made me agree to say I’d knocked into something in the blackout. I don’t mind saying I was bloody terrified - I’d have agreed to anything. The whole thing was my own fault anyway, I don’t know what else I thought would happen, not with Ralph. He’s so straight down the line. The devil got in me, as my nan used to say.”

“You breached their code of honour,” James said with a mirthless laugh. “Utterly beyond the pale. Beating you almost to death however, that’s quite alright.” Same thing had happened to him at school of course, after he’d told tales on Ralph.

“It was Odell I was trying to hurt really. I could tell he thought I was thick, just because I didn’t have their knack of sniping back and forth, or quoting some bloody thing in every sentence. But I outsmarted him quite neatly in the end. For a while at least.”

“He was a little tick at school,” James said with feeling. He was glad Bunny wasn’t even trying to pretend he was repentant.

“He still is. God he was up himself. My friend Bim had a set-to with him once, something about Ulysses.”

“Odell casting himself as Ulysses of course. You’d be Eurymachus I suppose.”

“My dear, how should I know?” Bunny said. “I didn’t go to that sort of school. The number of mind-numbing evenings I had with Ralph’s lot, rambling on about a lot of dead Greeks, trying to justify all their filthy copulating. Just get on and fuck, if you’re going to, that’s what I say. Save everyone the Latin lesson.”

“You didn’t see our Latin master,” James said. “Six solid foot of muscle and authority, banging on about Socrates. Like Errol bloody Flynn in tweed. I’d misbehave terribly in Latin.”

“For the canings?” Bunny said, a smile curling at the corner of his mouth.

“Yes. God I was awful, looking back. No wonder they wanted to give me the sack.”

Bunny stretched against him, biting lightly on his earlobe. “You don’t fancy being awful again just now, do you?”

James thought he’d like to be awful with Bunny for as long as Bunny wanted him to be.

 

Xxxx

 

It was 5am and the wrap party was beginning to wind itself up. Bunny was still going strong, mixing cocktails for all comers at the portable bar they’d set up. James was in a delicious haze of several strong pink gins and a couple of uppers, lounging in a chair and watching him.

He was going to ask him to come on holiday with him, he’d decided. Capri perhaps. Or New England to see the leaves. God no, Bunny would be bored to tears by that. Somewhere though. He couldn’t let this be the last he saw of him.

Getting up, he caught at Bunny’s wrist. “Come to my dressing room,” he whispered.

“Oh god darling, if you think I’m capable of anything just now…”

“Not that, you little tart,” James said. “I want to talk to you.”

“Such a sweet talker,” said Bunny, but he went with him with no resistance.

“I’m going back to LA in two days,” James said.

“Yes, dear, I’m aware,” Bunny said, brittle and distant suddenly. James thought of the Bunny of the night before, smiling mischievously as they stole the gin; looking vulnerable as he confessed his darkest behaviour. He didn’t want to be at arm’s length again like this.

“Come with me,” he burst out, shocking himself, all idea of the holiday suggestion disappearing. He didn’t want some half-way arrangement, he knew that now.

Bunny didn’t move, he just stared. “You... _what?_ ” he said, his accent pure east end.

“Move in with me,” James said. “You’ll look so lovely by the pool.”

“You’re tight.”

“No...at least, yes I am but that’s got nothing to do with anything I’m saying.”

“But what would I do?”

“Anything. Nothing. Decorate my house.”

“And when I finish doing that?” Bunny said and James pulled him tightly against him.

“Then I’ll buy you another one to decorate,” James said, nuzzling his neck.

“But I’m awful. I’ll read your diary.”

“I don’t keep a diary. Perhaps I’ll start so you can read it and get dreadfully upset and then I’ll have the fun of making it up to you.” _He likes champagne and silk_ , James thought, _I’d buy him that._

“I’ll get jealous and show you up at parties,” he said, but James sensed him weakening.

“You’d have to try damned hard to do that at a Hollywood party.”

“Well sweetie, don’t give me a challenge.” Bunny was still trying to joke. James held his shoulders and looked straight at him.

“Look. I know it’s mad, and it most likely won’t last and it’ll end in tears and rending of garments and you hitting me on the head with a gin bottle, but don’t you think it’ll be _fun?_ ”

He racked his brains for a way to make it more appealing. He’d mentioned homes and pools and Hollywood parties. What was left?

“Oh and I’m most of the way in love with you,” he said. “I’m not sure I mentioned that.”

“You hadn’t, but I’m not at all surprised,” Bunny said, smiling.

James felt blissful with relief. He could tell that Bunny would let himself be persuaded a while longer, perhaps with kisses, or gifts or dinner somewhere lovely. But in the end this delightful, complicated, twisted boy would come home with him - a joy he'd barely known he wanted.

And he could hardly wait.


End file.
